7th Pay Commission is the last: Employees to now get yearly revision of salaries..

7th Pay Commission is the last: Employees to now get yearly revision of salaries

The central government employees who were waiting for good news now say that the 7th Pay Commission is the worst one. While they expected that the government would give them revised allowances with arrears from July 2016 onwards, that did not happen. What has been even more disappointing is that the government is not contemplating the setting up of an 8th Pay Commission.

Sources in the government have made it clear that there will be no 8th Pay Commission. There will no pay commission in the near future, government sources said. Finance Ministry officials say that they would take a policy decision in this regard.

With no 8th Pay Commission, the question is how will the government revise the pay of central government employees? Justice A K Mathur who headed the 7th Pay Commission said that the government must review the salary of central government employees every year looking into the data available based on price index. The commission had recommended that the pay matrix may be reviewed periodically without waiting for the long period of ten years.

The salaries of central government employees can be reviewed on the basis of the Aykroyd formula which takes into consideration the changes prices of the commodities that constitute a common man’s basket. The Labour Bureau at Shimla reviews these changing prices of commodities periodically.

This would mean that government employees will not have to wait for ten years for the formation of a pay commission to review their salaries and pension. All salary hikes and other revisions would take place every year taking into consideration the inflation that year.

The employees say that this has been the worst pay commission ever. The previous two pay commissions were far better. The employees say that all other pay commissions had kept the minimum wage as the centre of their appraisal programme. However, this time the manner in which the minimum wages have been recommended it is saddening, they also say. The biggest problem however is the reduction of the HRA to 8,16 and 24 per cent they also say.